“El Amor Brujo” (“Love, the Magician,” from 1915), a flamenco music drama that will be shown in three performances at Peridance this weekend, was composed by the refined Spaniard Manuel de Falla, but it was meant to coruscate with Gypsy passion. Here is a snatch of the lyrics:

Only Hell’s fire burns hotter

than all my blood . . .

Suffering condemns me!

Love poisons me!

Sorrow kills me!

Ay! Ay!

These days, nationalism is a suspect emotion. People have not forgotten the Second World War. But in the nineteenth century—and even up to the nineteen-thirties—love of homeland was one of the most powerful sources of European art, above all of the music. As Western Europe became increasingly consolidated, with different countries drawing close to each other under the banners of industrialism and democracy, people became more self-aware about what their nationality was, and how it measured up to others’. This process was more contentious in countries that were farther from Europe’s cultural capitals, and therefore more likely to be seen, and to see themselves, as backward. The most famous example is Russia, but Spain had similar problems. Some Spanish artists tried to imitate European styles, or at least to make some money on their country’s sexy barbarism, but many Spanish intellectuals regarded such concessions with disgust and argued that their folk traditions should be closely guarded. Federico García Lorca, for example, believed that the gutty “deep song” of the Spanish Gypsies was an Iberian racial property. Now it was being adapted for middle-class consumption in cafés. Or, in his rather hysterical words, it was being stained by “the professional pimp.”

By the standards of the hard-line nationalists, however, a lot of good artists had taken to pimping—in other words, absorbing influences from beyond their national boundaries. That included Falla, who spent his late years creating what he hoped was a universalized version of Spanish music. He thus ran afoul of the watchful nationalists many times. They thought he was too cosmopolitan—Frenchie.

The version of “El Amor Brujo” at Peridance—a collaboration between PostClassical Productions and Peridance Contemporary Dance Company—will have a small orchestra, as in the première, in 1915. The original flamenco dances, like almost all improvised dances of the past, are lost, and the new choreography, by Igal Perry, is only flamenco-flavored. (If you want to see some serious flamenco dancing to this score, rent Carlos Saura’s film “El Amor Brujo.” It stars Cristina Hoyos, a tremendous virtuoso. There’s also an excellent knife fight.) The songs, which for decades have been performed by an operatic mezzo-soprano, will be sung by a celebrated flamenco cantaora, Rocío Bazán. Lorca would approve. ♦